GO+ Helper
If you are using an Android phone, setting your GO+ Bluetooth connection to high priority will greatly improve responsiveness of button presses. It is possible to do this through some Bluetooth management apps such as NRF Connect, but this requires manual setup every time the GO+ is connected. Determined to make this a simpler process I installed Tasker and spent several hours figuring out how to interact with the Android Java API to allow configuration of Bluetooth devices. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now while tweaking things so it works smoothly, I also added some other features I found useful.
As many people mentioned the original version did not work on Android 8+ this is due to stricter input validation in the required Bluetooth function. Getting around this restriction was not possible using just Tasker’s scripting features, so I made a tiny Tasker plugin to call the required function. I have been testing the plugin version for about a week, it isn’t as reliable as the native Tasker method but it works well enough that the connection priority gets set within about 30 seconds of the GO+ being connected. The notification will flick between the 2 states but don’t worry about this too much, as after the connection priority has been set once it persists until the GO+ is disconnected.
List of features:
- Auto starts when opening Pokemon GO app
- Scans the list of connected Bluetooth devices every 3 seconds to find the GO+ then sets it’s Bluetooth connection to high priority
- Notification icon to show when high priority has been set
- Auto closes when the app is not in the foreground and the GO+ is not connected (No way to check running background apps)
- Action button on notification to restart the phone’s Bluetooth (Waits for full Bluetooth shutdown before starting it again)
- Easy to configure through global variables in the Tasker project
Setup Guide – Using Tasker (Recommended)
- Download and install Tasker
- (Android 8+ ONLY) Download and install the Tasker plugin I created
- Download the Tasker script XML, to download in Chrome (mobile) open the menu, click the download icon at the top, center
- Open Tasker and disable beginner mode (Menu -> Preferences -> UI -> untick ‘Beginner Mode’)
- Long tap the ‘Home’ project at the bottom of the Tasker UI (looks like a House) and import the project file (.prj.xml), it should be in your downloads folder
- You need to enable accessibility for Tasker in your phone (Settings -> Accessibility) this will allow the script to auto run when opening the PoGo app
- If working correctly open PoGo, it should create a notification “Tasker GO+ Helper” and Tasker should report “1 active profile”. After connecting the GO+ as you normally would, the notification should change from “Waiting for connection…” to “Connected & high priority set!”
Setup Guide – Without Tasker
- (Android 8+ ONLY) Download and install the Tasker plugin I created
- Download and install the Tasker Factory APK version of the script
- You need to enable accessibility for GO+ Helper in your phone (Settings -> Accessibility) this will allow the script to auto run when opening the PoGo app
- Using this version of the script is less reliable at detecting when PoGo app is opened, so to start the script manually run the GO+ Helper app
- If working correctly open PoGo, it should create a notification “Tasker GO+ Helper”. After connecting the GO+ as you normally would, the notification should change from “Waiting for connection…” to “Connected & high priority set!”